5 Most Common Garage Door Problems & Solutions

Being in the garage door repair industry, there are a few problems we run into all time. So, we figured we would list out the most common problems we run into every day so that people could have a resource to go to if anything goes wrong with their garage door. After this, you’ll most likely be able to know exactly what the problem is when you’re garage breaks and the best way to go about fixing it.

1. Garage Door Spring Breaks

Your spring is what does most of the work to lift your garage door. All springs have a useful life, and when they reach the end of that life they break. Our technicians fix garage door springs every single day. One of our veterans, Roger, has fixed so many that he can be in and out of your house in less than 30 minutes on a Spring repair job. Getting a pro like Roger to fix your spring is the fastest way to get your garage door up and rolling again. You could buy the part and fix it yourself but there are specific tools you would need, it can be a dangerous repair job if inexperienced, and it’ll cost you way more time than if you just called a pro.

2. Unbalanced Garage Door

Sometimes your garage door will be working, but not quite like you want it too. It may be too loud, too slow, closes on its own, or something may just seem off. If nothing looks wrong but you’re having problems, it may be that your door is unbalanced. You can usually tell if your door is balanced or not by looking at the bottom of it as it opens. If it is not parallel to the ground it is unbalanced.

When your door is not balanced it greatly increases the risk of your spring or cables to break or snap off. Why? Because your garage door has to work much harder when it is out of balance than it would if it was properly balanced. Due to the risk of what could happen with an unbalanced door, we would recommend calling a technician for this as well. If you’ve ever been in the room when a spring or cable snaps off, you know that is a scary and sometimes loud few seconds. Professional technicians are trained for those situations, and can get you fixed up in no time.

3. Broken / Dead Opener

If you’re like most people, you probably don’t spend a ton of time analyzing your garage door. It’s just kind of something that exists in your home that you expect to work. After a while though, your opener can become a bit out of date. It may become so old that it doesn’t work, or old enough that you want something better that you could maybe control with your phone via Wi-Fi. Either way, a professional service is great because whatever price a pro quotes you will include labor as well as haul away & disposal costs. Pros will get whatever opener you want, install it, and dispose of your old one. The other benefit of using a pro is you can have it done from start to finish in an afternoon.

4. Rollers Ain’t Rollin’

When a roller breaks off it’s just annoying. Rollers are such a small part of your garage door, but it usually won’t work too well without them. This is a pretty simple fix that you can take care of yourself. Just make sure you buy Teflon coated rollers, since those are the nicest and most quiet ones.The main benefit of hiring a pro is, you guessed it, saving time and pros will also always check and make sure your door is balanced before they leave any job. So you get some added assurance that everything is working correctly.

5. Bad Trouble Shooting

This one can be funny and a bit frustrating. Sometimes there isn’t really anything wrong with your door, it’s just that you have something in the way or you took something away that you forgot about.

Here are a few examples:

Unplugged the opener and forgot to plug it back in

Put something down that’s blocking the sensors

Car remote or wall remote’s battery died

Manual lock is still in place

Before fixing or calling anyone, we’d recommend making sure none of the above bullet points holds true for your door. It’ll save you a lot of time and energy in the long run.

Well, hopefully you now have a pretty good idea of what might be going wrong with your door if it ever stops working. Obviously a lot of the advice points to calling a pro, but that’s mainly because pros save you so much time and energy. Some people like doing it themselves, and if you’re one of those people then hopefully you now have a better idea of what to look for.